Daily Times

JJ Rousseau has written somewhere that human beings are internally innocent but what makes them corrupt is the outside world. Innocence has much more and deep meanings than being without a sin and clean in character.

Most people think and consider innocence in crime and goodness binary. But it is much more than that. Innocence could be understood and felt in many other ways.

According to Aristotle and Plato, life of virtue is the best life. But what is the life of virtue? No one knows. They define goodness in socially being innocent but completely discount the internal aspect of innocence. The precise question here is what consists in innocence? What are those elements that make a person truly innocent? I believe innocence is a very visceral and emotional topic and it could not and should not be discussed on abstruse and philosophical terms. I will try to explain and couch innocence in my own terms and with my own experience of it.

We see a child and feel winsome and very gentle. Perhaps we think that this child is without sin and needs our winsome attention, care and love. Are we not deceiving this child with our innocent smile while considering this child innocent? Are children innocent? Yes, they are. Kazuo Ishiguro has written somewhere that all children have to be deceived if they are to grow without a trauma. He meant that when we smile innocently to a child, we pretend, in a very eerie way, that this world is very good and everything is fine, that this world is a very safe place to live. But when this child grows and sees how atrocious the world is, he comes to know that that innocent smile was but a deception. I was deceived.

Besides this, lately I have witnessed innocence very closely and viscerally. I can’t say this experience of witnessing innocence is pure and without my prejudices. But it has something to do with real and momentous innocence. There is an Iranian movie by Mohsin Makmalbaf titled as a moment of innocence. On the surface you will not notice innocence but there are underlying motifs and texture of innocence which could be seen in small episodes. Perhaps it is a moment where innocence could be traced and felt. A moment is very brief and short. Within a blink of an eye it passes and never turns back but it leaves its imprints and these imprints are so great and awesome in quality that they never wither away or wane. Like when you are on a bus and passing beside a field of grains. In this field a child is flying kites and her mother is coaxing him to help her in the fields. This episode is momentous and very brief, but this haunts you after you have left this place and reached your destination.

Lately I met a human being, yes, a human being, in a library, in whose person I saw a very innocent soul. Sitting on a chair, with hands on table and looking at me, the things which I heard from that human being were amazing for me. A soul informed by bright outburst and freedom of thought. I can’t remember exactly how she said this, but she quite freely said: let’s write a book. God! Let’s write a book… apparently there seems nothing peculiar and unique in that. But the way this was voiced was mind-blowing. I could feel tears in her eyes and peace in her face. This one sentence affirmed my criterion of innocence. The tone in which this sentence was expressed was inexplicably natural and mysterious. The moment this sentence was voiced was very brief and fleeting. But nevertheless, innocence reveals its true face in such episodes. These moments are free of drama and extraneous trappings of showing and imposing anything. These things could not be understood as crime and goodness binary but could only be grasped as revelation of one’s true inner self or soul.

Another example which I consider a moment of innocence is a passage from Arundhati Roy’s novel, the ministry of utmost happiness, which says: ” You’re the Imam Sahib, not me. Where do old birds go to die? Do they fall on us like stones from the sky? Do we stumble on their bodies in the streets? Do you not think that the All-Seeing, Almighty One who put us on this Earth has made proper arrangements to take us away?” Ah! Where do old birds go to die? This question, initially, was asked by Estha, a small child and a character from Roy’s novel, the god of small things, and I can’t remember exactly in which situation she asks this question, but this question is full of that innocence which is inexplicably amazing.

The best things and the most astounding things happen to us briefly and leave us eternally. But these moments never die, a moment of innocence never dies, it lives with you, and you can perpetually relive that moment, by remembrance. It is perhaps indispensable to have those eyes which effortlessly identify innocence. Unless you have the eyes, you are not able to witness that moment of innocence which appears so briefly that it hardly could be noticed by ordinary eyes.

In Majid Majidi’s movie, the color of paradise, a blind children, Muhammad, shares his sadness to an elderly blindman in these words: “Our teacher says that God loves the blind more because they can’t see. But I told him if it was so, He would not make us blind so that we can’t see Him. He answered “God is not visible. He is everywhere. You can feel Him. You see Him through your fingertips.” / Now I reach out everywhere for God till the day my hands touch Him and tell Him everything, even all the secrets in my heart.” He is told that God could not be seen. And he wants to share his secrets to God about how his family members dislike him due to his blindness. This moment of innocence could not be understood, neither shared by words, it could only be felt when you are in that precise moment when tears of Muhammad are falling from his eyes and he is expressing his tension of mind.

Life is brimming with such moments of innocence, we just need some beautiful eyes to witness those with open hearts. The innocence should be felt and immersed in our lives. Dostoevsky once wrote that only beauty could save this world, but I will add one thing in that and that is: only beauty and innocence could save this world.

The writer is a student, based in Turbat. He Tweets at @shahabakram6 and can be reached at shahabakram0852@gmail.com